Tiny Is The New Huge

When I was a kid, all of the coolest toys had a prefix like "MEGA" or "SUPER," suggesting that the bigger the toy, the better it was. Today's "toys" are going in the other direction, with descriptors like "nano" and "mini," the former of which suggests a size that the naked eye would have serious trouble finding. Cell phones are following this trend, too: it seems all our electronic devices seem to be shrinking by the day.

These devices hold important visual data. Phones have contact numbers, PDAs have email addresses and appointments, BlackBerrys have email. As the size of the devices decreases, so does the size of the font with which they display this data. If my father is any indication then, little by little, these devices and their small type will begin to alienate their users. He has me read him the song currently playing on his full-size iPod, for goodness' sake. If it's hard for people with reading glasses to use these devices, think of how a blind person must cope with our gadget-crazy society.

What if gadget displays could communicate in Braille? That's the idea behind a prototype technology being developed at the University of Tokyo. Without going into techno-details, the idea is to create a display that can dynamically create an array of tiny raised bumps much like pixels in a computer screen. Writing in Braille and even 3-D pictures would be possible in devices not much bigger than a PDA from today. (from New Scientist Tech) This would allow the blind to join the rest of us with pocket-size cell phones, digital organizers, and even portable music players.

So what's the story? We develop these technological devices to simplify everyday tasks, like communicating. Sometimes real functionality is sacrificed for good looks, or popular form factors. Tiny devices may be all the rage, but at some point they lose their usability. Developing technology that brings an entire new dimension (literally) to accessibility is a direction the industry needs to follow.

iPods for the deaf are a little farther away.